I was at Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago, and as I was looking at books/manga, we heard an announcement, “Due to an emergency, the store is closed, as of this moment. Please check out now and leave the store immediately.” So, of course I panicked and bought the books that were in my hand at the time. One of them was The World’s Greatest First Love, Vol. 1, a yaoi manga about a guy named Ritsu Onodera who starts a new job, only to find out that his boss was his high school crush that he’s never gotten over.

One of the coolest things about The World’s Greatest First Love is that it’s set in the manga publishing industry, so you get to learn a lot about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into producing the manga that you enjoy. It’s pretty meta. Which of course sets off a vicious cycle where I want to read all the manga, and then I start buying all the manga, and then my bank account hurts. But I digress…

When the story starts out, Ritsu is bitter and depressed. He’s kind of messed up from a relationship that he had in high school, where he expressed feelings for a guy, and the two of them got together, but then something happened between them, and now Ritsu is jaded. So he’s thrown himself into his career as an editor, but everyone thinks his career success is because his dad was the owner of the company and gave him special privileges. So he takes a new job with a different publishing house. He wants to be a serious person editing serious things, but then he gets thrown into the shojo (aimed at girls) manga department, and he’s bitter about it.

But then Masamune Takano, who is now his boss, realizes who he is. And whatever happened between the two of them didn’t destroy the feelings that he had. He tells Ritsu that he’s going to make him fall in love with him all over again. And that’s the start of what I assume will be a redemption arc where Masamune’s hotness and persistence will wear through the walls that Ritsu has put up around his heart, and a beautiful romance will ensue.

As I mentioned in previous manga reviews, I love that this is a story about grown-ups. So much anime and manga is about teenagers in high school, so it’s nice that while this one has flashbacks, it’s about career-driven adults.

I really really liked this one, and I hope that I can find more of the series soon! And I know that there’s also an anime of it on Crunchyroll, so I may jump over and try that too.